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beauty babble

I’ve not tried an open thread for Beauty Babble, so let’s give this a shot.

What’s your trigger item?

What are the items that you will not be able to resist, those things that you know you will purchase with no hesitation?

I will never be able to resist any perfumed product with the word ‘blood orange’ in the description. I am weak around cosmetic clearances, especially if I can justify it as a ‘weird’ purchase or a ‘staple’-so nude lipsticks or mascara, basically. Weird here being outside of my comfort colors. Mascara sales in general are a problem for me, and so are Walgreen and Rite Aid’s deep discount sales. And I have maybe 25 lipsticks that are kinda sort maybe oxblood on my skin tone.

We won’t get into my sudden obsession with DS sized everything and drug store BBs.

So what’s the stuff you’ll always purchase, even if you know you shouldn’t?

It’s not so much that I’ve given up blogging so much as I keep losing track of time. I keep meaning to write something, then realizing it’s now Tuesday and what I’m trying to write is last Sunday’s folklore post. Which means, if I was smart, I would draft things when I think of them and set them to autopublish in the future. I mean, if I was smart. I’ve never been very plans-oriented with blogging though.

I doubt there’s anything overly controversial or even exciting on this year’s list. Maybe this will be the year where I can start tracking changes in my personal beauty habits.

-I hate the 2016 Pantone colors

I do. I hate them. I find them to be insanely…young. I hesitate to use the word immature because I know that sounds more judgmental than I intend, but frankly, the pale pink and baby blue remind me of a baby nursery. I don’t want cosmetics that make me look quite that young.

Oh, you didn’t know that cosmetics drama was a thing? Google Lime Crime, find a Reddit link, and give up an afternoon or five wading through it all. It’s so frivolous and so intense. I’m not going to take a stance on the LC debate here, but yeah, it gets heated and I can’t look away.

-My color choices are changing

Sometimes rapidly. Up to about two weeks ago I would have never put pink on my face, but I’ve found that I like heavily saturated, dark pinks for lip colors and rose gold for eyes.

-My favorite make up look is basically no make up at all

One of the looks I keep gravitating to is a heavy red lip and mascara. That’ s it. No foundation. No eyeliner. Nothing but red and black.

-I have discovered micellar water

This is nothing new. I’m not saying anything earth shattering. I have finally given in and tried micellar water-and it does actually work well for me. Do I feel awkward buying a $7 bottle of fancy cleansing water? Yes. Does it work well enough that I’m going to keep buying it? Yes.

-I will buy everything I can in DS sizing

I’m that person that goes to Sephora and Ulta and hits up the DS section first. I prefer that size-the fact that they’re that much cheaper helps, but seriously, I have never panned a lipstick. If I can get a DS for $10 instead of a full sized for $25, then I’m going to do it.

-I’m technically on a low buy

I don’t do well with no buys, so I have a low buy in place for 2016. It’s clunky and complicated and I’m already finding loopholes in the thing, but I am trying to put a cap on my beauty spending.

-I use beer money sites to fund my collection

Beer money sites are those sites that pay you small amounts of cash to take surveys or polls, and you can then cash out for gift cards. I use the cards (normally for Target) to fund the small amount of purchases I am allowed to make. Mainly BBs because I’m currently obsessed with drugstore BBs.

For non-confessional babble: Rite Aid takes Carecredit now. Which is awesome for the end of pay cycle when we run out of TP or something, but it does work for anything in the store except gift cards. The other shopping related news that I didn’t know about but I’m probably lagging on is Sephora will give you your birthday gift ahead of time. I don’t often get to the mall with the stand alone Sephora, so I picked mine up today-months ahead of time.

The problem with this photo isn’t that it’s filtered (though it is). It’s that I’m actually not really wearing a face in it-I have mascara and a drug store level liquid lipstick (Rimmel Provocalips in Kiss Fatal) on and that’s it.

My overall routine though is much more complicated than last year’s, but I’m also enjoying it a lot more. So it’s a trade off.

-Water. I pretend that I’m hydrated, but I’m not. I am trying to get back in the swing of drinking plain water.

-I start out with a layer of moisturizer. I use Ponds or a Ponds knock off now, I feel like it stands up to my skin better [same as last year]

-After my moisturizer has dried down a little, I use a layer of a bb or tinted moisturizer. I’ll use a medium coverage foundation-applied however I feel like. I have a beauty blender knock off, a brush, and my own hands. I’m honestly not blown away by the blender. Using it is fun, but it’s not necessarily the game changer the Internet says that it is. *Where I do find the bb helpful is around my mouth. I have a slightly different tone around my mouth, and I get the dread foundation-mustache if I’m not careful. I don’t really get it with the bb.

-Sometimes if I’m feeling really fancy I use the Goss method of powder before foundation. A lot of times lately it’s powder after foundation to help even out tone a little, since none of mine are really, truly a satisfactory fit. I think it’s a me thing though, no one else seems to notice.

-Blush applied a little bit to the back of my cheeks with a powder brush or a kabuki. I own two or three blush brushes, but I like the powder brush better. I have no loyalty to any particular blush-color-family.

-I prime my eyelids-either the Monistat I was using last year or Wet and Wild. If I’m using a powder based shadow, then I use an eyeshadow base. If I’m using a smudge pot/stick I skip the base. I have finally fully embraced my love of extremely minimalistic eyes, so it’s normally a shimmery champagne/bronze/copper/rose gold color. If it’s not, then it’s a deliberately really messy smudged eye in dark brown. I sometimes blend color into the outer third of my eyes. Unless I’m wearing a dark lip. Then I just line over a bare eyelid. That’s pretty much the only time I wear eyeliner-and I’m proud to say at 30 I can almost draw a straight line now [I’m all about that honesty in blogging].

-Mascara-honestly I’m in love with Revlon’s Ultimate mascara in the red tube. The spoolie is really weird and I have to move really carefully or it overloads my sparse lashes, but good days are really, really good.

-I use a random lip stick a day. Liner is whichever I grab out of the jar, so I sometimes get odd and interesting colors out of my liner/lipstick combinations.

-I do use facial wipes. Ahem. I know, not frugal or green but I won’t wash off my make up otherwise. I use Cetaphil when I take a shower, and micellar water after the face wipe at night. Right now I’m using Boots, and I like it well enough. And more Ponds at night.

Honestly though that sounds like a long list, but I rarely do a truly full face at any given time. If my foundation is heavy, then my eyes probably are severely minimalistic-and I need the base to make colors read correctly on my skin. If I’m wearing a bold lipstick, then a lot of times I’m in just a bb (or less) and mascara, maybe some eyeliner. I still go to Starbucks in completely bare face sometimes. I don’t remember the last time I wore liner with eyeshadow. A day where I’m spending 20 minutes on my cosmetics is still a long day for me.

And…my brows are completely not on that list. It’s completely against conventional wisdom but I have no interest in touching my brows. I read somewhere that you should never trust a beauty blogger that doesn’t touch her brows. I suppose it’s a good thing then that I’m a horror blogger with a beauty column, and not a beauty blogger who likes horror movies.

I get asked questions sometimes, and it makes me realize as a blogger that the blogging community gets stuck on the big ideas. You know, being the first to review a product [I’m probably never going to be that person. This is a column on a fairly wide ranging blog, and I have no real interest in going further into beauty than I already do] or talking about wide-scope trends.

Not the basic stuff like, ‘how do I make sure I actually wear the stuff that I own’?

Which is a question I was asked last week, and it’s actually a really solid question. I really like testing things-whether it be new oil based perfumes or foundation. I like the process of finding a new product, trying out, seeing how it handles. Then I end up with a good sized (at least for me, my budget, and the amount of space I have to put towards it) collection-and eventually, through new purchases and purging, a collection I’m actually happy using.

And a tendency to want to continually use my favorites, which sometimes means spending more money on a product than necessary because I’m repurchasing a more expensive version of something when I have perfectly usable, functional products that aren’t as pricey/nice/perfect/whatever. This happens with my foundation, mostly, because I’m so generally dissatisfied with drug store foundations but am constantly looking for one that I like well enough to make it my staple DS product.

Long winded lead in for a simple answer: I have a basket that I change out weekly.

In the basket, which lives on my bathroom sink, goes a bb/cc/tinted moisturizer, a powder, a foundation, a palette if it fits, a blush, and a mascara. I also keep a smudge pot or a smudge stick and an eyeliner if it fits.

Every Wednesday (for no good reason, Wednesday just seems to be the day it started happening), I switch out those items from something else in my collection. I rotate out my lipstick daily. Sometimes I don’t feel like wearing what’s in the basket, so over the course of a week new stuff gets thrown in. But on Wednesday it gets cleaned out and restocked with new product in my bins.

It keeps me moving through what I own. It doesn’t keep me from overspending on my collection completely, but it does make me aware enough to give me pause-I have to find a really awesome sale/clearance on blush for me to bring another one home because it’ll probably be two months before I overlap again, if I used a different one every week for the basket, for example.

I’m breaking two rules here: It’s not Monday and I’m blogging at night, but I don’t want to get to Monday and forget what I was wearing in this photo. I’m blogging at night so don’t expect a really solid product list. It’s 1 AM.

*Camera quality, low natural light [overcast day], but unfiltered.

Mid is -quite- annoyed that I have been spending as much of my Christmas money on household staples as I have been (and even the frivolous stuff has been pretty staple-y-when Target had all beauty section on sale this week I bought cleansers and mascara). So I stopped in the beauty section during a rare Walmart run.

I have a list of DS foundation color matches from findation.com on my phone, so I decided, hey why not, I’ll pick up a new foundation.

One of the first major strengths of this foundation is that it’s so incredibly cheap. I think my bottle was under $4-which even for my tightest budgets means it’s not a risk. At all.

However, that’s about the most energy I can put into a review. This is the most neutral I’ve been on a beauty product I’ve been in a long time. And that list includes my pencil sharpener.

The fact the bottle comes with a spatula will make the bottle worth it in the end (I’ll keep the cap for other bottles). True ivory is about a quarter shade too dark and it leans yellow on me, but powder helps with both. Ideally I want to find foundation I don’t need to powder. The coverage is good. It pills a little on my nose but all of the stuff I’ve tried other than the Physician’s Formula in my collection does.

Beyond that…reviews complain that it’s thick, but it’s not nearly as thick as the Tarte Amazonian Clay that is my HG. Texture on dry down is good, fine. It doesn’t smell. Reviews talk about oxidation, and I suppose it does the tiniest bit-since it does dry down a little dark. But it doesn’t go orange either. Wear is fine, not the longest I’ve worn but it held up. I will say this, it’s the best foundation under florescent lights I’ve worn yet. So no strong feelings in any given direction. I don’t think I would necessarily repurchase, but only because I’m looking for something I really love-but I’m not upset over the loss of $4 and I’ll finish the bottle.

I don’t post this twice a week, but I’m going out of town this weekend, and am not sure if I will get it published if I don’t now.

Empties and Purges

I felt like I was in a place mentally where I could purge, so I did.

*Elf palettes-So these were supposed to go, but Mid staged an intervention. My daily eye looks are minimalistic to an extreme and neutral leaning. I have a stack of palettes that I was keeping because they were gifts from him but not being used…and then he realized they were the gifted palettes. They’re currently back in my box and I’m going to make an effort to carry more color around my eyes if I’m keeping them.

Smith’s minted rose lip balm-purged, not getting used. I have piles of lip balms I like better.

Jordana– purged, Lip gloss in gorgeous. I think this is pushing 8 years old and just gets pushed around. Easyliner eyeliner in seagreen. I would actually probably use this one if I didn’t have a feeling it’s also 8 years old.

Maybelline, Color Tattoo in Fierce and Tangy-purged, not getting used and slowly drying up. I think this pot is 3 years old and it’s not getting any rotation.

Milani, Baked Sand eyeshadow-purged, I never really got into this one.

Ulta lipstick-purged, color 241. I have similar colors in formulas I like better.

Elf-purged, Jumbo Lip Gloss Stick, summer nights-This is close enough to my natural lip tone that it just leaves me with shimmery lips. I’m not really a shimmery lip person.

Wet and Wild-purged, lipstick in Breeze-I have similar colors to this already so it’s getting tossed, Turn Up the Volume mascara-it left me with panda eyes every time I wore it, Megaeyes defining marker in brown-this was one of those markers that came out of the package bone dry. I would have returned it but I spent $.50 on it.

Old Spice Bearglove-Empty-Mid’s favored body wash. We go through this stuff like water.

Unfiltered and natural light. I actually remembered for once. Only wearing the CC, no other product.

So the photos on the website are a little extreme. I don’t think this stuff is photoshop quality good. But I will say that I’m tempted to go back and get more, hopefully in light instead of light/medium.

It’s a touch darker than I normally wear (it was more obvious in person), but I straddle the line between light/light-medium in every brand so it’s always hit or miss. I also have foundations that are still currently too light while my tan’s fading, so I can layer it with those foundations. I also found that the color evened out a little while I wore it, so after an hour or so it wasn’t as dark. It felt pretty consistently good on the skin as well. The big thing was that it didn’t cling to my dry patches, so I’m going to try it under my foundations.

The big thing for me was this-I wore it on a day when I was ill. I put on a fairly light application at 9 am. I worked until 930 pm, and it wasn’t until 9 pm that someone asked me if I was ill because my color was off. I had noticed that it was fading around 830-but that’s still close to 12 hours for what was barely an application.

Wet and Wild Take on the Day Primer

Testing a theory

My SADD got really bad last winter. Like…self destructively bad. I got into beauty in quasi serious way to set up a self care routine. Now that it’s SADD time again, I went back to a full beauty routine-if you told me at 25 that I would hunting the perfect moisturizer I would have laughed at you.

It does seem to be helping. I’m much better this year than last year. Plus I’ve fallen in love with brick red lipstick. If I have 75 of them, as long as they make me happy, it’s cheaper than therapy.

Lip Purge

…That said, I started my fall lip challenge. I have to admit, it wasn’t much of purge this time around. I only ditched two tubes-but I have more stuff to go through. If I have similar colors in a formula that works better for me, I’m keeping the better ones. Life is too short for dry lips.

Trying this again since the first time I tried to post this it tried to post it for four days ago…

This is my favorite time of year for cosmetics. Like, I wait all fall for the Profusion palettes to show up at Walgreens.

I love the colors that come out-Wet and Wild’s Here’s to the Wild Ones? I’ve bought three of those lipsticks, and I almost never buy multiples of a LE line. I don’t even do that with my oils from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I love, love, love dark lips-especially cranberries and wines.

But I really can’t resist ultra cheap cosmetics. The $1 Profusion palettes are actually normally pretty good-I’ve had maybe 10 of the total and only had to ditch one for lack of pigmentation. They’re not going to be heavily pigmented…but. If you’re just finding my blog, here’s the thing: I veil full time. I haven’t shown my hair in public during the day in close to two years. So between my hoard of dark lip colors and the already heavy visual of the top half of my head, I’m perfectly fine with a lower pigmented eye-especially for work. In other words, a lower color pay off is a lot less of an issue for me than it is for a lot of people (and honestly, most of these really cheap palettes are fine-not amazing but fine-to begin with).

Just so you get an idea of what I mean when I say I already have a lot of color near my eyes. The photo is filtered but I’m also fairly certain I’m barefaced in it.

I’m going home after Thanksgiving. I’ve not had a trip home on a major holiday in eight years.

I’m only going overnight, taking an Amtrak. So I’m dealing with two things: a lack of time and a lack of space.

I go truly minimal for trips like this.

-A bb cream or lightweight foundation. Just enough to make it look like I haven’t been on a train for four hours.

-A light highlighting blush. I like Maybelline’s Master Class.

-A neutral heavy palette. I like to use one that also has a couple of pinks or oranges for options.

-Brown eyeliner and mascara, for my coloring it’s more forgiving than black.